SULTANS AND SAINTS – THE DICHOTOMY OF RULE

The Muslim head was the Caliph of Islam. He needed no instructions in Islamic values, for listening to the Quran itself, he was the imposer of Islamic values themselves. The Friday khutba was never the work of some Imam, it was the work of the Caliph or those Governors under him who executed the laws of Islam. And after the Caliphs, the various Sultans of various areas were themselves specialists of Quranic law. No misunderstanding could ever rise. Everything was going well.

Most of the Sultans of our region read the Holy Quran daily, many were Hafiz-ul-Qurans, and knew the intricacy of Islamic laws. Sultan Mahmud Ghaznavi always had the desire to be a Hafiz ul Quran, or having the ability to learn it by heart. This applied to Sultan Muhammed Ghauri, as well as Qutub-ud-din Ai-beg. The Tughlaqs were strong in their understanding of the Quran. Nothing could have gone wrong.

The conspiracy against Islam was the birth of the so-called Holy Man, the Sufi, who claimed to be communicating with Allah himself. A blasphemy of no small order, for the Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) was the last of the Prophets. Nobody could communicate with Allah after that. Anyone claiming to be so was a fraud of the highest order.

The conversions in Hindustan brought the previous beliefs of the converted still in vogue. The Pundit, the Guru, the all knowing Baba, had to be replaced, and the Holy Man stepped in with his own brand of Mantras. And when like other religions, Islam was separated from the Ruler to the Holy Man, inevitably chaos was the result. Sultan Feroze Shah Tughlaq confronted the holy man of his day and conflict arose. The Saint had Feroze Shah Tughlaq murdered at the hands of his own real son. Of the few good things, Maulana Abdul Wahab aimed at was the rejection of this holy man in the minds of the people. I think credit can be given to the Wahabis for projecting this ideal in Islamic values. But Sectarianism is haram in Islam. It is to be Muslims and nothing else. To think in terms of a sect is withdrawal from the rahmat of Allah.

The Quranic laws were converted in the modern age as merely rituals to satisfy the spectator, not the participator in things. The advent of Islam suffered at the hands of these Holy Men. One beautiful way towards the future is the removal of these so called Mullahs of today from all media, as well as all those Seculars being funded by foreign lobbies. Both Mullas and Seculars are two sides of the same coin. Give everything to the specialist. Every field with its own specialization. And certainly in Islam there are no specialists, just pseudos trying to hoodwink the masses.